When I was little, back in the early 80s, I was crossing the English Channel on a ferry to France. They had a small arcade onboard, hidden away amongst the slot machines. I watched a guy playing Astro Blaster and it amazed me. I didn't get to play it then, and I didn't catch the name of it, but the memory stuck with me.

26 years later (this was a couple of weeks ago) I thought it would cool to post here asking what the game was called, in the hopes of finally playing it. But how to describe it? I decided I would crack open the MS Paint and draw my memory of it, in the style of many great forum posts on the Internet before me.

Here's what I came up with:

I remember this stage the most. Alien spaceships flying from left to right really fast, and slowly getting lower. He had to shoot them all before they reached him.

Spaceships that were like butterflies, getting too narrow to shoot at times. I remember him hitting the hyperspace button to slow them down, destroying them all, then being rewarded with some kind of refueling ship.

After I drew these, I realised I could load up MAME, sort by genre, and look at screenshots of games from 1984 and earlier. So I did, and Astro Blaster came up first under Shootr.slide. I was surprised it was as early as 1981. I was even more surprised, when I loaded it up, that it had digitised speech and was actually quite cool to play.

I played one round and decided to save playing it for a BYOAC competition. So here it is! I hope it doesn't suck!

- Last day is Thursday May 20th (11:59:59pm Pacific Daylight Time), 2010.

- High score wins.

- No savestates, savestate practices, etc. during the round.

- MAME INP recordings are optional, but encouraged!

- A screenshot is required to enter a score (press F12 to save screenshot showing your final score) or take a photo of the screen if playing on a real machine.

- If you're a MARP competitor on this title, keep in mind this is just a friendly competition amongst forum members, so maybe you shouldn't enter. However, if you're a forum member and this is a game you're good at and nobody knows about it, this is your time to shine!

I think that was the first coin-op videeo game I played. I begged my mom to let me into the mall arcade, so she gave me ONE quarter, and that was the only free machine. I did really well at it, but I was "amped" too, which probably helped with the reflexes. I left the arcade all wobbly-kneed and excited. Weird, I know.

Galaga came out the same year, not to mention that the graphics and play of Astro Blaster seemed a little console-like. I remember it, and thought it was okay. It's still fun to pull out of the garage.